Deep Throat: The Saga Of Collusion From Vengeance To Sedition

The elderly gentleman stood in the doorway of his Santa Rosa, California home with his family behind him and waved to the crowd of reporters gathered on their front lawn as the flash bulbs of cameras captured the moment in snapshot images for historical record.

The 91-year-old man appeared to be an average retired American with snow-white hair, ruddy complexion, and energetic smile. There was no indication other than the surprising announcement the he was in fact the notorious ‘Deep Throat’ of Watergate fame.

What makes this new information even more fantastical than just the revelation of the vaunted ‘mystery man’ who brought down the Nixon Administration, is that the revelation has actually generated more intrigue than existed before.

The seemingly genteel man in the doorway named W. Mark Felt had once been someone who was steeped in the dark recesses of cloak and dagger governmental involvement with more power than just about anyone on the planet during his days as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Deputy Director.

The power he wielded in that position came from the secretive, undercover investigative information that was collected through FBI agents who worked to accumulate data on the personal lives of suspects who were chosen for various reasons including governmental profiles and political opposition.

Having access to that collected information made him either a trusted ally or a dire enemy to anyone in a governmental position. He was one of the only people to have access to every piece of information in the entirety of FBI rank and file.

Mixing that power with the ruthless desire of possible vengeance created a toxic combination that seems to have turned Mr. Felt into the Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde character of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Deep Throat.

The ensuing saga and culminating intrigue spanned decades in which literally hundreds of speculators tried to unravel the mystery of who exactly the shadowy figure depicted in ‘All The President’s Men’ was. Several top Nixon administration officials had been fingered as Deep Throat including Pat Buchanan, George H. W. Bush, Alexander Haig, Diane Sawyer and even Mr. Felt.

The revelation that Mr. Felt was actually the culprit, shed a massive amount of light on the Watergate drama, while at the same time turned a complex unsolved mystery into a full blown national and political debate.

Many on the Left, including the media, were ecstatic over the discovery and were ready with an onslaught of praise and admiration, but were let down that Deep Throat wasn’t one of the more prominent players in the episode.

Most on the Right finally realized their opportunity to vent frustration over the resulting collective vilification of Conservatives politically, and in the media spotlight, created by the saga and the mystery that helped to sustain it.

It was the candid affront given by Conservative leaders, especially those close to the Watergate scandal that caught media elitists off guard. The mainstream press hadn’t anticipated the Right would be vocal over the revelation, probably because they had gotten so used to Conservatives cowering in the heat of media attacks.

Especially concerning the Watergate scandal. Media elitists assumed they would forever be able to paint President Nixon as a crook and by transference continue to use that template for any Conservative they wished to destroy. Watergate, after all, was liberal media elitists’ grandest coup d’etat.

Pat Buchanan called Felt out and referred to what the final chapter of this sordid tale really concerned. “We’ve always conceded that the ’old man’ handled it badly. But he was not brought down by a band of angels. He was brought down by a band of Nixon-haters... and whom we now learn used a snake in the FBI. This is basically a battle over history and a battle over truth,” he said.

What truth would that be? According to media elitists, President Nixon was a crook who abused power and therefore exemplifies a dishonest presidency. Yet those same media types continue to play history revisionists concerning the many documented abuses of power during the Clinton administration.

It’s also documented historical fact that FDR, the great presidential bastion of liberalism, regularly used the IRS and the supposedly confidential information they had about American citizens to attack his enemies. Conservatives and Conservative groups were also harangued by the administrations of JFK and Bill Clinton.

President Lyndon Johnson also used the FBI to ‘investigate’ the Senate staff of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and mountains of information was amassed on JFK and abuses by him and his administration resources. This all shows that ’corruption’ in the American government wasn’t exclusive and didn’t preserve the ’integrity’ of government simply because two reporters used a FBI informant to destroy a president.

The bigger issue here is that the Watergate scandal had more to do with media elitists building their power over the dissemination of information through the press and attacking Conservatives than ending corruption in the White House.

On the one hand, there were two journalists who were after what most journalists are after... recognition, praise, and financial security. Taking advantage of a story that they assumed would be explosively powerful and their golden goose was logical.

Their media bosses knew how big the story would be, but more importantly for them, was the opportunity to take down an enormously popular Conservative president who had won re-election in 1972 with over 41 million votes and 520 electoral votes. They were absolutely petrified that America had turned against liberalism and was embracing Conservatism.

On the other hand, you had a disgruntled employee who believed he would become the head of the FBI after Hoover died. When that didn’t materialize, he decided it was time for him to do his best to discredit the man he blamed for being shunned of his coveted position... President Nixon.

That revelation illuminates the very hypocrisy of his reasoning and motivation for Deep Throat. He attacked President Nixon as being the catalyst for taking part in activities that Felt himself either took part in regularly or authorized personally.

In the late Nineties, when the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal was in full bore, Linda Tripp was practically, and by some reports totally, destroyed by the Clinton administration and the liberal media for her role as ‘informant’ in that debacle. Clinton was even indicted for perjury, yet, unlike Nixon, he refused to step down from his role as president.

The fact that the liberal media still adores Clinton and admonishes Tripp is proof of the hypocrisy exuded by liberal media elitists concerning political ideology and their double standard.

This saga may be in the final chapter, but it will probably be the longest chapter of all as history revisionists try desperately to maintain their position that Nixon was ’crooked’ and that Deep Throat was ‘honorable’.

They were absolutely petrified that America had turned against liberalism and was embracing Conservatism.

I think that's quite a leap. Nixon was not conservative, at least not much moreso than J. F. Kennedy, and in some areas, notably less so. What he mostly was, was part of a different power structure.

The media at that time considered Nixon to be the personification of Conservatism... today we realize that in effect he really wasn't, but that doesn't matter in the context of how Nixon was perceived by the media, and that perception also continues to this day. For them to now make him out to be something else would be for them to destroy the legacy they have worked to create.

According to an AP report in today's local paper, Felt's daughter says finances a motive so enough about the debate whether Felt was a hero or traitor. The real motive was greed, no more no less:

SANTA ROSA, Calif--The daughter of the former FBI agent who was revealed last week as Deep Throat has acknowledged that money played a role in the family's decision to go public.

W. Mark Felt, 91, was the key source in the Washington Post's Watergate probe that helped bring down President Richard Nixon. Felt stepped forward last week, ending a three-decade debate over the source's true identity.

"He is relieved to get the secret off his chest," Joan Felt said of her father in an interview published Sunday.

Joan Felt, 61, told the newspaper there were many reasons her family wanted to reveal the elder Felt's role in Watergate after three decaades, but added, "I won't deny that to make money is one of them." Some literary agents have said the family could earn more than $1 million from a book deal.

"My son, Nick, is in law school and he'll owe $100,000 by the time he graduates," she said. "I am still a single mom, still supporting them to one degree or anoher, and I am not ashamed of this."

Joan Felt said her father suffered a stroke in 2001 and has undergone surgeries for heart problems and a broken hip but is still lucid.

"We had to help him see that most of the world now considers what he did heroic," she said. "At the time it was happening, he wouldn't have gotten that percentage of support, but history has shown it was so important what he did."

Nixon was brought down over the vast corruption in the oval office. It may that a double standard was applied to him vs. LBJ, but so what? Rather than whining about how conservatives are held to a higher standard than liberals, we should proudly complain that we want to be held to a higher standard because we are willing to meet it.

Felt might be a jerk, but in the end if Nixon and the people around him weren't engaged in unethical behavior, there would not have been anything for Felt to leak. They brought themselves down.

PS. In regards to the rest of the article, Nixon was no conservative. They just hated them because he helped to out the commies in the '50's.

Now that the secret identity of Deep Throat has been exposed, so has his life story and what he did as the Deputy Director of the FBI. Felt, in November 1980, was convicted of authorizing break-ins into the homes of members of the Weathermen in the 1970s without warrants. Felt testified during the trial that he was following standard procedures for government investigations.

That revelation illuminates the very hypocrisy of his reasoning and motivation for Deep Throat. He attacked President Nixon as being the catalyst for taking part in activities that Felt himself either took part in regularly or authorized personally.

So the mediots and lime elites want to make a hero of the man who was/is guilty of what Nixon was charged with.

....Hmmmmm....sounds like a Mole-hill to me.....

.....That revelation illuminates the very hypocrisy of his reasoning and motivation for Deep Throat. He attacked President Nixon as being the catalyst for taking part in activities that Felt himself either took part in regularly or authorized personally.

....Mole-hill....

So the mediots and lime elites want to make a hero of the man who was/is guilty of what Nixon was charged with.

....While servong under Hoover, what 'cover' religious denomination did Felt claim?

....Off.....Moles.....on the Hill.......Deep-deep-throat-hill....

Felt was passed over as Director of the FBI for L. Patrick Gray when J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972 by Nixon. He was bitter with Nixon about the pass over and decided to go after him. Some of the articles in the WashPost in 1974 were attributed to Deep Throat but it was apparently after Felt left the FBI so couldn't have possibly been in the White House for some of the private conversations - Woodward and Bernstein likely made up some of what they wrote based on some inside information. Felt was one of several sources and broke the law by passing on documents and stories that should not have been shared given his position in the FBI. He was no hero. If he felt he had to tell somebody about wrongdoing, he should have gone not to young reporters but to Judge Sirica or one of many congressional committees. I hope Felt's family get nothing for his story. Bitterness and greed is all this was about.

Nixon resigned not because he did anything wrong but because of the cover-up.

Remember that there was essentially no social conservatism in 1972 (Roe hadn't yet begun to shape it); Nixon was as close to "conservative" as it was known in those days, and it started long before his terms as Veep. "Conservative" was anticommunist, and Nixon had earned his stripes against Hiss. If he hadn't been PERCEIVED as conservative, his negotiations with the Soviets and Chinese could not have happened. The media, steeped in liberalism since the mid-fifties, hated Nixon every bit as much as they hated Taft or Reagaon or, when they DARED, Bill Buckley.

Two points. First, Nixon hated the Kennedys and the Kennedys hated him back. Bradley, the WaPo editor, was, without question a Kennedy "man". So conservative or liberal, Nixon was on the wrong side of the American "royal family".

Second, although Nixon managed to morph himself into a squishy moderate by the late 60's early seventies with wage and price controls, opening to China and pulling out of Vietnam, Nixon started out as a hard core anticommunist with the Hiss case and the campaign against Helen Gahagen Douglass. So it's not how history perceives Nixon on the liberal/conservative scale, it's how his enemies perceived him at the time which was as the guy who had a role in bringing down Hiss and who painted a red streak on the back of Douglass.

I'm agreeing with you as these are basically your points as well.

?.....Felt was passed over as Director of the FBI for L. Patrick Gray when J. Edgar Hoover [died?] in 1972 by Nixon. He was bitter with Nixon about the pass over and decided to go after him. Some of the articles in the WashPost in 1974 were attributed to Deep Throat but it was apparently after Felt left the FBI so couldn't have possibly been 'in' the White House for some of the... 'private'... conversations....?

/'Chuck' Colson?

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